The link between energy efficiency and secure power / reliability / quality of supply

Does energy efficiency come at the cost of lower reliability? Or does reliability reduce energy efficiency?

This page is a live document to support the discussion webinar on the above topic before and after the event. We look forward to reading your comments on this page.

Considering efficiency and security of power as a tradeoff may be the wrong perspective. The need for reliability can be driven by safety concerns (e.g. airport traffic control), social considerations (e.g. healthcare facilities) or an economic rationale (e.g. internet data centres). Once the need for reliability is established, it just becomes another energy service, or an aspect of an energy service that needs to be provided efficiently.

Typical subjects in this theme are:

• efficiency loss due to a secure power infrastructure
  • losses in UPS / gensets
  • efficiency of energy storage
• undesirable PQ effects of energy saving solutions
  • dip-resilience of inverter drives
  • extra losses and risks due to harmonics
• energy saving impact of PQ solutions
  • active filters
  • power factor correction
• 'black box' technologies

Practical information

The webinar took place on Friday, February 15 from 12h30 to 13h30 GMT+1 (Brussels).